Ramirez's second choice was No. 34 but, well, that was Fernando Valenzuela's number. "It's not retired, but it's retired in our hearts," said Mitch Poole, Dodgers' clubhouse manager.There's probably an interesting book, well, a long article anyway, to be written about the politics of retired numbers. The no-brainers like Ruth's 3 and Kaline's 6 are boring. It seems that lately, however, we've had a lot of good-but-not great guys' become interesting from the retired number perspective. Remember that flap about LaTroy Hawkins wearing Paul O'Neill's 21? Now you have this Fernando stuff.
If I'm running a team I probably don't set the bar so high as to only allow Hall of Famers' numbers to be retired, but it seems like you gotta have some standard or protocol in place, doesn't it?